Thank you!

We'll be in touch soon.

“[The] best scientific-philosophical approach to understanding how consciousness evolved.… A wonderful book that will shape and drive thinking for years to come.”—Shane O’Mara, Times Higher Education

How did we come to have minds? For centuries, poets, philosophers, psychologists, and physicists have wondered how the human mind developed its unrivaled abilities. Disciples of Darwin have explained how natural selection produced plants, but what about the human mind?

In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could in fact have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection. A crucial shift occurred when humans developed the ability to share memes, or ways of doing things not based in genetic instinct. Competition among memes produced thinking tools powerful enough that our minds don’t just perceive and react, they create and comprehend.

An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and scientists, From Bacteria to Bach and Back will delight and entertain all those curious about how the mind works.

Book Details

Paperback

February 2018

ISBN 978-0-393-35550-5

5.5 × 8.3 in
/ 496 pages

Sales Territory: Worldwide including Canada, Singapore and Malaysia, but excluding the British Commonwealth.

Endorsements & Reviews

“Dennett is always good company.… He writes with wit and elegance.” — Thomas Nagel, New York Review of Books

“This is a book to read and relish and then read again.” — Michael S. Gazzaniga, Wall Street Journal

“Readers will find their minds enriched with many powerful thinking tools.” — Economist

“If you have not encountered [Dennett’s] work, you surely
should . . . very few contemporary thinkers have supplied us with so many ‘thinking
tools.’ . . . . Dennett’s book is astonishingly rich and will introduce you to
most of the key ideas in the terrain he strides energetically across.” — Adam Zeman, Standpoint

“[Ties] together 50 years of thinking about where minds come from and how they work.… Dennett has earned his reputation as one of today’s most readable, intellectually nimble and scientifically literate philosophers, as this subtle, clever book shows.… Immensely instructive and pleasurable.” — Nature

“A subtle and
interesting argument.” — Stephen Rose, Guardian

“Encyclopedic knowledge of both the history of and the latest thinking in philosophy, evolutionary biology, psychology, and computer science.” — Christopher Beha, Harper's

“Brave and bracing.” — Oliver Moody, The Times

““If you have not encountered [Dennett’s] work, you surely should … very few contemporary thinkers have supplied us with so many ‘thinking tools.’ … Dennett’s book is astonishingly rich and will introduce you to most of the key ideas in the terrain he strides energetically across.” — Adam Zeman, Standpoint

“Daniel Dennett has written an absolute firecracker of a book, one revisiting in depth and breadth the central theme of his life’s work—understanding and explaining how we are conscious.… Dennett’s language is wonderfully robust, and reads as if he is carrying on an argument with both himself and the engaged, but somewhat skeptical, reader. The writing is by turns humorous, wry and profound. It is dotted with brilliant phrasing. It is an exhilarating read; this book deserves to be taken deeply seriously as the best scientific-philosophical approach to understanding how consciousness evolved.… A wonderful book that will shape and drive thinking for years to come.” — Shane O’Mara, Times Higher Education